Related Articles

For Champagne to become the tipple it is today — popped at weddings, quaffed in casinos, sprayed by racing drivers and smashed against ships — a few men had to die.

Not just any old men. Young ones married to clever young women.

Without the widows of Champagne, mankind’s most seductive fizz might well not be what it is now. One of the world’s most famous Champagnes — Veuve (‘Widow’) Clicquot — explicitly evokes the rather grim tradition. But other legendary houses — Bollinger, Laurent-Perrier and Pommery — also got their starts from tragedy-tinged widows. Then there are the many lesser-known names that still carry the widow tag, such as Veuve Fourny and Veuve Doussot.

From its bottle shape to its taste, colour, labelling and even marketing, Champagne owes its uniqueness to a series of widows from the early 19th century who used the sometimes mysterious deaths of their husbands to enter the male-dominated business world. The widows became so successful that dozens of Champagnes added ‘Veuve’ to their names even though no widow ran the house — just for its mystique and marketing value.

“Champagne is the story of widows,” said Francois Godard, scion of Veuve Godard et Fils Champagne house. “Women who lost their husbands, and then outshone the men.”

Widowhood gave these figures an independent social status in France. Unlike other women — who were the property of a father or a husband — only a widow could become a CEO.

“In the 19th century, if you’re not married you’re dependent on your father, you can’t have a bank account and you can’t pay staff. If you are married you are reliant on your husbands,” explained Fabienne Moreau, Veuve Clicquot’s archivist. “Only a widow can take this position as head of a company.”

The stern expressions of these women stare out from portraits that hang in their sprawling Reims-based mansions in the French region of Champagne, the only place in the world where bubbly can legally be called Champagne. The story of the Champagne widows begins with Barbe-Nicole Clicquot.

Once upon a cold October’s day in 1805, Francois Clicquot, the young heir to a Champagne dynasty, suddenly died after a grape harvest, a few years after marrying the fresh-faced Barbe-Nicole.

It was a thunderbolt in the conservative Champagne landscape when the 27-year-old widow defied male opposition to take over the house.

Opportunistic and tough as nails, the young widow transformed the small house into a global empire.